How telecoms play the ringing time game on your phones?

Indian mobile operators have reduced the ringing time on their customer’s phones to 25 seconds from the earlier 45 seconds following Reliance Jio’s flight with Bharti Airtel and Vodafone Idea.
Reduction in ringing time, which will upset India’s 120 crore plus phone subscribers, will be assisting Airtel, BSNL, Vodafone Idea and Reliance Jio to make more revenue from voice calls.

Mobile customers will not be happy with the reduction in ringing time because they will not be able to pick up phones at a short notice. They will be forced to call back in such situations making them pay more for completing their voice calls.

Reliance Jio will be able to reduce termination charges payable to rival phone companies if it reduces missed calls on its telecom network.

Senior management at Airtel and Vodafone feels that Reliance Jio was trying to correct the asymmetry in its favour by reduction in the phone ringing duration. The mobile phone consumer will call back if the phone automatically disconnects faster due to reduction in ringing time. This will assist Reliance Jio to make more revenue from voice business because it will receive more termination charge as against paying currently.
Reliance Jio maintains that the traffic asymmetry which makes it a net payer of termination charge is because Airtel and Vodafone have around 60 percent of 2G users who need to pay for voice calls and therefore they give missed calls to Reliance Jio users who then call them back. Reliance Jio is offering free voice calls to all its 300 million plus phone customers across India.

Jio is a net payer of termination charges than a receiver because its network receives more calls than outgoing ones. Termination charges are paid on the basis of outgoing calls from one mobile network to another network.

Airtel India’s incoming calls from other networks stands at 54.70 percent compared to 45.30 percent of outgoing calls. Jio’s incoming calls stand at 35.75 percent and outgoing at 64.25 percent. Vodafone Idea’s incoming calls are 59.30 percent and outgoing at 40.70 percent.

Reliance Jio is the largest Indian telecom operator with adjusted gross revenue (AGR) of Rs 10800.44 crore during the June quarter of 2019. Airtel reported gross revenue of Rs 7468.63 crore as compared with Rs 6721.06 crore for Vodafone Idea, Rs 2598.61 crore for BSNL and Rs 407.19 for MTNL.
Telecom regulator TRAI will soon be playing its role by announcing its decision on the final IUC charges.

Traffic imbalance in terms of absolute minutes between Reliance Jio, an only 4G operator and other operators (Airtel and Vodafone Idea) has reduced from peak of 60 billion minutes per month in December 2017 to 40 billion minutes per month in June 2019, TRAI consultation paper

TRAI’s analysis indicates that the difference between incoming and outgoing off-net minutes of all the service providers is reducing.

TRAI on 19.09.2017 brought down wireless to wireless domestic call termination charge to Re 0.06 or 6 paisa per minute, effective from 1.10.2017 to 31.12.2019. TRAI indicated its zero termination charge will be effective from 1.1.2020 for domestic call termination.